Title: 7-10 & 7-11: Closing up the rudder and trailing edge rivets
Proseal should be all set up so I removed clecos and started on the additional blind rivets which hold the rudder spar to the clip angles. Also got all of the skin to spar rivets done. It didn't seem that the squeezer would get to them all so I just decided it would be easier to buck them all. May have been a little overconfident in my bucking skills. After getting through the first twenty or so, I could see under the tape that they were sitting a little proud. I stopped to figure out what was going before I bucked them all. The several layers of masking tape I had put on the flush rivet set to protect the skins had worn through in the middle so the extra tape was causing the set to not sit flush against the skin. Lesson learned. Didn't even need tape on the rivet set since I had already taped all of the rivets in the row. Fixed that issue and set the remaining rivets with no problem. Then proceeded to drill out almost all twenty rivets that were not flush. I also then realized that every one of the rivets I drilled out could have been accessed by the squeezer. I squeezed most of redo. On to the double flush rivets. I felt everything looked pretty straight still when I removed the clecos and was confident going in to it. I cleaned up all the holes and taped rivets on one side. Since there is really no good side of a rudder, some people alternate sides for the shop head. I just put them all on the same side. The riveting went fine. Used the back rivet set against the plate. I supported the rudder on either side of the plate with carpet that leveled everything up pretty well. Once the shop heads were set, I flipped the rudder over and used the flush set to do a final set of all the rivets. Honestly I'm not happy with how it came out. The overall straightness of the trailing edge is good but there are places where the skin is pulling away from the wedge. The proseal is not adhered. Not sure where I went wrong. Maybe the proseal was too thin. Maybe it didn't cure all the way. Maybe I should have used the clothespins between every rivet to hold it tighter. We'll see if I can do better on the elevators and then we may revisit the rudder.


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